Annan stands by UN pointsman in Iraq

["Ulhas Joglekar" <ulhasj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

7 November 1999 : Annan stands by UN pointsman in Iraq
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has reaffirmed that his top
relief official in Baghdad, Hans Von Sponeck, would stay in his post despite
US and British opposition.
``Mr Von Sponeck will be going back to Baghdad. It was my decision to
make,'' UN spokesman Fred Eckhard quoted Annan as saying Friday after a
meeting with American and British envoys.
Ambassadors Jeremy Greenstock of Britain and Peter Burleigh of the US raised
the issue of Von Sponeck among other matters discussed in their 25-minute
meeting with Annan, Eckhard said.
Von Sponeck, who was on his way to Baghdad Friday, has been criticised
privately by the British and openly by the US, in part because of his
opposition to the stringent sanctions imposed on Iraq after its troops
invaded Kuwait in August 1990.
He is the fifth UN coordinator in three years of the ``oil-for-food''
programme under which Iraq is allowed to sell $5.26 billion worth of oil
over six months to buy food, medicine and other supplies despite the
sanctions.
US State Department spokesman James Rubin twice this week accused Von
Sponeck of overstepping his mandate, raising questions about how much longer
the envoy would be in his post. But UN diplomats said they believed Rubin
had put Annan on the spot and had forced him to extend Von Sponeck in his
post for a year on Tuesday as well as backing the German publicly.
Nevertheless, they said that pressure from the US might convince Von
Sponeck, who has the support of France as well as Germany, to resign by the
end of 2000.
Rubin, in answer to questions at his regular Washington briefing Friday,
said, ``We do not believe it is appropriate for a UN official, whatever
private views he's entitled to have, to challenge the position the United
Nations Security Council has taken about the wisdom of the sanctions
regime.''
Rubin charged that Von Sponeck had allowed the Iraqi government to fill
warehouses with food and medicine that should have been distributed to the
Iraqi people under the terms of the humanitarian programme.
Diplomats said Von Sponeck was told earlier in the week not to state his
opinion on sanctions publicly, as he did on one occasion. He also had talks
with American and British officials in an apparently unsuccessful effort to
defuse the situation.
The oil-for-food programme, managed by the Security Council, which has to
approve nearly all goods going to Iraq, has often been criticised by its
administrators as being too little to lighten the impact of sanctions on
ordinary Iraqis.
Von Sponeck's predecessor, Denis Halliday of Ireland, was a frequent critic
of the sanctions as well as the programme, which will not be repaired until
the Security Council finishes its current discussion on easing the
sanctions.
Ambassadors from the US, Britain, France, Russia and China, permanent
Council members with veto rights, met on Friday for the first time in six
weeks to wrestle with a potential resolution that would suspend the
embargoes if Iraq complied with some key disarmament demands.
Accounting for Iraq's nuclear, chemical, biological and ballistic missile
programmes is a key requirement for the eventual lifting of the
sanctions.(Reuters)

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